UNITED NATIONS - The African leader some call a hero and others a destructive despot suggests people in his country aren't hungry, they just can't eat their favorite food.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, said in an interview with The Associated Press that his people are "very, very happy" though aid agencies report 4 million of 11.6 million face famine.

"You describe it as if we have a whole cemetery," Mugabe said of a reporter's description of the southern African nation's dire straits, blaming "continuous years of drought."

The problem is reliance on corn, he said during Friday's interview, "but it doesn't mean we haven't other things to eat: We have heaps of potatoes but people are not potato eaters ... they have rice but they're not as attracted (to that)."

But the cost of potatoes is beyond the pocket of ordinary Zimbabweans.

Internationally, Mugabe has become a pariah and looked set for further isolation at the weekend, when the U.S. government said it was preparing travel sanctions against him, his government and family members, prohibiting them from traveling to the United States.

That would be punishment for alleged gross human rights abuses, including torture of opponents, and theft of elections, most recently in March.

Zimbabwe became one of Africa's most vibrant economies under Mugabe, who was elected in landslide 1979 elections after a seven-year guerrilla war forced an end to white minority rule in Rhodesia, once a British colony.

He assured nervous white farmers, then fleeing the country that "there is a place for you in the sun."

Zimbabwe became the regional bread basket, with some 5,000 white commercial farmers growing enough to feed the nation and export. Buyers from all over the world came to Zimbabwe's annual tobacco auction, tourists flocked to the Victoria Falls and wildlife reserves, while its Sandawana emeralds and renowned Shona stone sculpture were widely popular.

That changed in the 1990s. Mugabe's rule became increasingly repressive against a growingly vociferous opposition and corruption grew rampant. Mugabe then seized on an issue that long has preoccupied Africans  land ownership.

Pointing to a distribution that had a few thousand whites owning tens of thousands of acres of rich lands, the government began appropriating white farms in a violent campaign in which some white farmers were killed.

Tens of thousands of farmworkers lost their jobs and most land was distributed to the family and friends of politically connected Zimbabweans, though some ordinary people got small plots.

Last week, the Commercial Farmers' Union said fewer than 1,000 white commercial farmers remain, working a fraction of land they once sowed. A parliamentary committee said there would be no farming season this year, even if the drought breaks, because there are no seeds, no agricultural chemicals because there's no foreign currency, and no fuel to transport products or work tractors.

Everyday in Zimbabwe queues more than a mile long form for basics like bread and gasoline.

Zimbabweans also are reeling from what Mugabe calls a "cleanup" campaign, in which hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class urban people lost their homes to bulldozers.

Mugabe insisted though that "We pride ourselves as being top, really, on the African ladder ... We feel that we have actually been advancing rather than going backwards."

Yet on Sept. 8, setting out Zimbabwe's aims for the U.N. millennium goals before heading to the World Summit, he said the number of Zimbabweans who cannot afford one daily balanced meal has risen from 20 percent in 1995 to 48 percent in 2003, and that 63 percent now cannot afford more comprehensive basic needs including things like school fees.

In Africa, his seizure of lands that whites took from natives when they colonized in the 1800s is applauded, and he is seen as a towering hero.

Now, he said, his government will take a stake in private mining enterprises to ensure Zimbabweans benefit from their natural resources. He said he expects companies mining there, including the multinational Anglo American, to understand that desire.

"What we intend to do is for the state to have a stake in the production of some of our minerals  gold, platinum, diamonds," he said. "We just want to be partners. We are not doing anything unusual, and this is the practice in many countries." Zimbabwe also mines coal, chromium ore, asbestos, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, lithium and tin.

Mugabe, 81, said he has fulfilled all his ambitions except retirement. He plans to stop being president in 2008, and write and farm, but said he'll remain in politics until he dies.

" I can't retire from that unless the Almighty says 'enough is enough'."

Now, he said, his government will take a stake in private mining enterprises to ensure Zimbabweans benefit from their natural resources. He said he expects companies mining there, including the multinational Anglo American, to understand that desire.

"What we intend to do is for the state to have a stake in the production of some of our minerals  gold, platinum, diamonds," he said. "We just want to be partners. We are not doing anything unusual, and this is the practice in many countries." Zimbabwe also mines coal, chromium ore, asbestos, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, lithium and tin.

UNITED NATIONS - The African leader some call a hero and others a destructive despot suggests people in his country aren't hungry, they just can't eat their favorite food.

This garbage is from the AP? "The African leader some call a hero and others a destructive despot"???? Who is calling Mugabe a hero, how many of them are they, and who cares? The writer is simply trying to bury the fact that Mugabe is a monster, by pretending this is mitigated somehow because "some" people, unnamed, consider him a "hero" for reasons unspecified.

Let's try this kind of mealy-mouthed obfuscation on a similar, but bigger, historical example: "Stalin, the Soviet leader some call a hero and others a destructive despot suggests people in his country aren't hungry, they just can't eat their favorite food. 'Let the Ukrainians and Kulaks eat grass or tree bark' opined the Soviet leader, hero of the Russian Revolution and Civil War."

It raises the question, why can't politicians ever just get over themselves and leave things alone? 20 years ago Zimbabwe was doing fine. 10 years ago Venezuela was doing fine. 30 years ago Iran was doing fine. But no, they must always shovel people around like concrete and wreck everything they touch. The more they wreck, the more they sling their slanders around to avoiding facing the fact, pitting people against each other and wrecking still more. All to save their precious self-importance. They are all worm food in the end anyway, it is not like it ever does anything for them.

You wouldn't want to be sitting in Mugabe's dining room with him holding a sharp knife and a fork, his chef standing behind him whispering in his ear, nothing on the table except a large empty platter, and you overhearing the words 'medium rare' and 'a little flavoring'

The problem is reliance on corn, he said during Friday's interview, "but it doesn't mean we haven't other things to eat: We have heaps of potatoes but people are not potato eaters ... they have rice but they're not as attracted (to that)."

Mugabe continued,"There is much to eat for those who are not finicky. People refuse to eat rats, grubs, dust, gravel, bark, or feces although these too are plenty. Even the flesh of dead neighbors is shunned by these ingrates.

26
posted on 09/17/2005 7:05:10 PM PDT
by Once-Ler
("Our only hope is that Congress will continue to do what is does best... nothing." John Roberts)

The interesting thing about corn as a food crop is illustrated easily by feeding non-ruminants nothing but dried ears of corn, especially if you lay out the corn in a staight line curving only slightly inward and then, leaving every thing to nature, go back the next year and marvel at your brand-new spiral-shaped corn patch.

42
posted on 09/18/2005 10:08:21 PM PDT
by Old Professer
(Fix the problem, not the blame!)

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